Introducing the database

This course focuses primarily on queries, which are only one of MicrosoftAccess's five main object types.In order to get the most out of this course, you should have a basic workingknowledge of the other four, namely tables, forms, reports and macros.Now, there is no need to be an expert in their application but you should feelcomfortable knowing what each object is and what they are used for.Throughout this course, we will be working with data from the Two Trees Olive Oil Company.In the navigation pane on the left, you will notice that we have severaldatabase objects that have already been established.

I've gone ahead and applied a custom grouping based off of the chapters for this course.So, if you open up Chapter 1, you will see all of the files that we will look at in Chapter 1.At the very top, we can click on this drop-down menu and switch to Object Type,which will show us all of the objects within our entire database.I will scroll to top and you will see that we have a list of our tables, our queries.And I will scroll down to find all of our forms and our reports.We can go ahead and minimize these using the up arrow on the side of the bar.

Let's scroll up to the top.I will go ahead and switch this back into my custom grouping and we'll look at Chapter 1.Now, when jumping into a new database with unfamiliar data, it's always a greatidea to take a few minutes to review the tables and relationships in order tofamiliarize yourself with the contents that you will be working with.Let's go ahead and go up to the Database Tools in Relationships window.You will see that our database contains multiple tables that are all related to each other.We will start with this Orders table.

The Orders table has a ProductID for the product that was ordered.That's linked to the Products table.The Products table in turn is linked to a table that describes our sizing, ourOilID, and our GradeID for each oil type.If we go back to the Orders table, we will see that that's linked to a tableabout the customer that placed the order, the table of our employees thathelped with the order,and if we scroll to the right, we will see a lookup table that give us moreinformation about the states that our customers and employees are from.Let's take a look at each table individually to look at the data that's within each.

Let's open up our DirectCustomers table by double-clicking on it inthe navigation pane.We will see that our Customers table has a Customer ID, First and LastName,Phone number, Address including City, State and Zip.And I will scroll to the right, we have got our Email address and a Yes and Nofield that describes whether they are subscribed to our newsletter.Let's go back to our Employees table.Our Employees table includes an Employee ID, First, Middle and LastName, Phonenumber, Address, City, State and Zip, Email.And let's scroll to the right. We have got their HireDate, their Hourly rate of payand what Department they are part of.

Let's go ahead and take a look at our Orders table.I will double click on in the navigation pane.Our Orders table references an OrderID number. This is a unique ID for thetransaction. The date that the transaction was placed.An ID number for the customer that placed that order, an ID number of theproduct that was ordered, and the ID number of the salesperson that assisted with that order.If we open our Products table, we will see our ProductID number, the full textof what that product is, a unique code for the type of oil that that productrepresents, its size, its costs and this is our cost.

We have got the price to the customer and then we have two calculated fields forMarkupDollars and that's the difference between the price that the customer paysand then our cost, and then we have a MarkupPercent, which is the percentbetween our cost and the price the customer pays.Let's take a look next at our GradeID table.This is the simple lookup table that includes our GradeID and the text ofwhat that grade means.The same thing applies to our OilID.We have our OilID numbers and the full text of what that is in a unique code.

We have got our Sizes table that translates our size into a text version, so wecan see that the 8 ounce size is Small and the 64 Ounce size is our Half Gallon.And finally, we have a lookup table for States.This takes our states' two letter state abbreviations and it gives us the fullname of the state and some information about what division and region that state belongs to.So, that was just a quick overview of the Access 2010 environment and thedatabase that we will be using throughout this course.If any of that was new to you or you feel you might need somerefreshing, checkout Access 2010 Essential Training available on thelynda.com Online Training Library.

Now that we are little more familiar with the data that we will be working with,we can start turning that data into information with queries.

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Author

Released

6/16/2011

In this course, author Adam Wilbert illustrates how to create and leverage real-world queries and turn raw data into usable information. The course covers setting up queries, performing calculations, using the built-in Access functions to further refine query results, and identifying top performers or areas for improvement based on a range of criteria.